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How do I mount a 24' radar on my backstay

4K views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  Valiente 
#1 · (Edited)
I need to mount a 24' radar on my backstay and I don't have alot of cash. I am taking a rather long passage and need to have this radar working and I don't have time to put it on the mast. What is the least expensive way to do this? What product or products do I need and what do they cost? Any help is great thanks.

John
 
#2 ·
Mounting a 24" radome, fully enclosed I hope, on a backstay is a rather difficult proposition. It is easier to make a fixed mount for it... and probably less expensive to do so than to try and create a low-cost backstay mount.

The problem with a backstay mount is that it has to be engineered to not damage the backstay, and to keep the radome oriented in the forward direction and relatively level. Also, it has to be designed to stay in position without any real surface or object to mount it to. This really complicates the design IMHO.

Making a post-mount is far simpler, since you can fairly effectively gimbal the mounting platform along the longitundinal axis of the boat, to compensate a bit for heeling.
 
#3 ·
We mounted a radar on a transom post last year, and while I had a friend that was able to do some welding, the total cost of SS pipe and fittings was around $150.

The trick is getting the radar high enough above the deck to increase range and avoid microwaving people on board. Ours is 7 feet above the cockpit seats.

We used a 2" SS thickwall tube and fashioned a bracket to the toerail to anchor the bottom, and welded it to the top rail of the stern pulpit. The radome is a very small one, 12" and only about 7 lbs, so our needs are smaller than yours. Even so there is some motion in a seaway but it seems OK. Though we planned to gimbal it, in the end we did not. So far we have been motoring when we needed it, and were in relatively sheltered water.

You might look around for a broken mast section from which you could make the post, and then come up with a way to support it. The aluminum section would be stiffer than the SS tube we used, but it's a bulkier installation.

There are backstay brackets available commercially, but they are indeed pricey ( near 2000 euros on one site I found)
 
#5 ·
There was a gimballed backstay mount that began with the letter "W" that I recall people just loved...but they went out of business. If someone can recall the name, perhaps eBay or sailboat swap meets can provide the name.

Given that there are so few products that nearby EVERYONE agrees are great (Scotchbrite pads, Lavac heads and Velcro come to mind), this one stuck...partially...in my mind.
 
#6 ·
Chuck, valiente-

He's trying to do this for as little $$$ as possible. A backstay mount is probably going to be more expensive than a pole mount. All of the backstay mounts I've seen are fairly to really pricey... while a non-gimbaled pole mount could be made fairly cheaply.

It would help if Laguz said what kind of boat this was going to be put on... and running the cabling for the radar will still be an issue.
 
#7 ·
I don't know what your budget is but I bought the Waltz gimbaled backstay mount 4 years ago for a 24" (4kW) Raytheon radome and I'm very pleased with it (I also added the 4 ft extension tube which gets it above the level of my wind generator on the opposite side of the stern). I bought it from pyacht.com and I just looked at their website--it's $710.
 
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